At the moment there are no release procedures that can be followed for releasing Gimmecert. In order to make the maintenance easy in the future, it would be a good idea to have the foundation for this worked-out in the early stages. Preferably this process should be semi-automated.

As part of creating a release procedure, it would be good to also add some documentation around development on how the versioning works, etc.

The following should be done:

• Create initial release notes based on the existing issues. Release notes should consist of:
  • Abstract overview of what has been implemented. This can be a more human-friendly description.
  • Listing of all issues that have been fixed/implemented during this release. Separate issues per type.
• Document release notes update procedure. Release notes should be updated along the way, together with fixed bugs/implemented features/enhancements.
• Document the versioning schema used for Gimmecert. Use the semantic versioning for this purpose.
• Write helper script for making releasing easier. The script should:
  • Ensure the OpenPGP signing card is available for making sure all commits/tags are signed.
  • Verify there are no uncommitted changes.
  • Try to perform all commits/tagging early in order to prompt user at beginning of process.
  • Roll-back tags in case of failed tests.
  • Take care of filling-in correct version in release notes based on the current branch and already released versions. Might be useful to have a replaceable string for working release notes.
  • Take care of starting new release notes (more as a placeholder).
  • Take care of tagging releases.
  • Prepare release in a dedicated branch in case something goes wrong. Once release is fully functional and has been tested, tag/merge that.
  • Create maintenance branches where appropriate.
  • Take care of running a clean test in all Python environment prior to proceeding.
  • Take care of pushing the changes upstream, including tags.
  • Take care of building and uploading the release to PyPI.
• Document the release procedure.